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PNS Daily Newscast - January 21, 2019

Could the nation’s airports be the next pressure points in the government shutdown? Also on our Monday rundown: Calls go out to improve food safety; and a new report renews calls for solutions to Detroit’s water woes.

African American Inmates Outlive Non-inmates, Report Finds

PHOTO: Health care spending is at an all-time high in the U.S., but a new report in the Journal of American Medicine finds access to quality health care for young men of color so disproportionately poor they stand a better chance of living longer in prison than in society. Photo credit: State of California Office of Public and Employee Communications.

March 23, 2015

PHOENIX - Arizona has plenty of major hospitals that offer the latest in technology, but a new report says too many young black men are disconnected from care and, as a result, are likely to live shorter lives.

Report co-author Dr. Stephen Martin, EdM, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community at Boston Medical Center, says while health-care spending is at an all-time high in the U.S, young men of color see little benefit from it. In fact, he says, they have a better chance of surviving in prison.

"Your odds of dying are half in prison what they'd be on the street, because you have the things that you need to stay alive and stay healthy," says Martin. "You have nutrition, you've got a roof over your head, you've got medical care that's accessible and guaranteed by the Constitution."

The Viewpoint commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association notes African-American men can expect to live about five fewer years than white men. To help change that, Martin says the nation needs to increase funding for social and public health programs.

Martin describes what he calls a significant asymmetry to unbelievable technical advances in medicine and the absence of social services and effective primary care in communities of color that he says could do much to help men.

"It's striking how only three cents of our American health care dollar goes to public health - just three cents," says Martin. "This is the same public health that gave us 90 percent of our life expectancy gains in the 20th century. And yet, compared with medical care, public-health and social-support funding have been eviscerated."

The researchers note that heart disease and cancer contribute to lower life expectancy but homicide is the leading cause of death for black males ages 15 to 34. It also ranks among the top three causes of death for black male children, ages one to 14.